PLANETARY MUSINGS

Entries for April 2006

What makes the Earth (and other planets) go?

For the coming Fall 2006 semester I will be teaching GEOL 315/415 - Structural Geology and Geodynamics.  Simply stated, the focus of this course is how and why the ground beneath our feet moves.  Most of this motion is hundreds to thousands of miles below us, but there are incredible and important consequences at the surface like earthquakes and volcanic activity.  GEOL 315/415 is required for the geology major, but students interested in engineering, math, and science have enjoyed and found value in the course as a technical elective in the past because it meshes with and reinforces or introduces concepts that are commonly used in many disciplines, the difference being that they are applied to a whole planet.  We will look at the basic principles of bending, breaking, and flowing materials as well as the transfer of heat and how those principles can be used to interpret the behavior and history of the Earth and other solid planets.  In particular, we study what drives plate tectonics, what are the consequences of volcano building beyond lava and explosions, why are there earthquakes, and how we know that the mantle is convecting. 

a return to Venus

After more than a decade, earthlings have sent another spacecraft to the planet Venus.  The European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft Venus Express (a near copy of Mars Express) went into orbit Tuesday.  The Venus Express mission is aimed primarily at understanding the thick veil that is the planet's atmosphere, though there is some hope that a couple of instruments may return some scientifically useful data from observations through the atmosphere of the surface.  In the early 1990's, NASA's Magellan spacecraft used a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to image the surface; radar is one of the few instruments that can penetrate the clouds around Venus.  However, there is potentially a 'window' in the infrared region that might penetrate the clouds.  In any event, any new science from Venus is a good thing!


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